Jury in Boston bombing trial ends first day of deliberations

BOSTON, April 7 (Reuters) - The jury in the Boston Marathon
bombing trial on Tuesday concluded its first day of
deliberations without reaching a verdict on whether Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev, is guilty of the 2013 attack that killed three people
and injured 264 others.

Tsarnaev, 21, is also charged with shooting a police officer
to death three days after prosecutors contend he and his older
brother set of a pair of homemade pressure-cooker bombs at the
race's crowded finish line on April 15, 2013.

The question of whether the ethnic Chechen defendant is
guilty of 30 criminal counts may be the easy part of the jury's
job. If they find him guilty, the same 12 jurors will hear a
second round of evidence before determining whether to sentence
Tsarnaev to death or to life in prison without possibility of
parole.

Defense lawyer Judith Clarke readily admitted her client's
responsibility on Monday but contended that 26-year-old Tamerlan
Tsarnaev had been the driving force behind the attack. Tamerlan
died early on April 19, 2013 after his brother ran him over with
a car at the end of a gunfight with police.

"The defendant in this case has been neutralized and will
never again cause harm," read the statement, signed by Cardinal
Sean O'Malley of Boston and three bishops. "Society can do
better than the death penalty."

Though the death penalty is unpopular in Boston, a
liberal-leaning city with a deep-rooted Catholic community,
jurors who serve on federal capital murder trials must express a
willingness to impose it. It took the court 24 days to choose 12
jurors and six alternates who satisfied that condition.

Prosecutors called 92 witnesses over the last month to make
the case that Tsarnaev was an equal partner with his brother in
plotting the bombings as vengeance for U.S. military campaigns
in Muslim-majority countries. The defense called just four
witnesses, including an FBI photographer who also testified for
the prosecution.